The 6th annual Dog River Great Drift was held yesterday. Despite the dreary forecast of cloudy skies in conjunction with a small craft advisory meaning windy conditions, 40-50 kayakers still participated. The launch was in Rabbit Creek at Rangeline Road and the destination was the Rivershack Restaurant about 5 miles away.
Someone commented after finally getting to the destination that the name of the Great Drift is misleading because any Drifting they did resulted in the wind moving them backwards in the wrong direction.
10-20 feet away from the Rabbit Creek Rangeline Road launch site shows the ugliness of the Dog River watershed. Recyclable aluminum, plastic, glass and more pollutes the shoreline wetlands.
It is ignorant to let aluminum cans rot into the waterway environment but that is what is happening in ignorant Alabama where recycling is an option for a few instead of being a requirement for all.
Glass which is obviously being buried abundantly along Dog River Watershed's shoreline as seen here in Rabbit Creek next to Rangeline Road, is impermeable. That means less water will be able to seep into the groundwater aquifers as more and more glass acumulates along and in the bottom of the Earth's waterways. A bottle here and there after each heavy rain added to the waterway pollution will eventually add up after thousands of years of ignoring the recyclable glass pollution problem. What happens when all the drinking water aquifers dry up? Gulp.
After the Great Drift I went back to the start location to see how much litter was left behind. Remarkably, I was unable to find a single piece of litter left behind by the Great Drift participants or organizers. And I looked all over the launch and registration areas. Big Kudos go to Dog River Clearwater Revival, the participants and all the volunteers for leaving the ALDOT right-of-way cleaner than it was before the event!
The only sign that there was a bunch of people in the area was a few lines in the sand left behind from dragging some of the kayaks to the water.
That's how we should all be: always leave it cleaner than when you arrived.....
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